Letters to David
Irving on this Website

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correspondents ask us not to, this Website
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debate.

James
Cowellasks for
good archival sources, April 3, 2004, which answer
the question, what did the German people know, and
wheh did they know it?

What
did they know, and when did they know
it?

I AM a senior high school student and have to do
a major research project on an area of historical
debate as part of my extension history course. I
thought I would look at the general German
population's knowledge of the Holocaust and other
Nazi atrocities e.g. the Einsatzgruppen
killings in the occupied territories.

I really admire your campaign for real history
and strive to reach that same level of objectivity
and truth in my final research thesis.

I wrote to you as I am having trouble finding
reliable sources or texts on the subject. Quite a
lot of the material is published by Jewish
associations, who claim that the German population
knew whole-heartedly what the Nazis were carrying
out and assisted them in carrying out of the Final
Solution.

I find this view rather extreme, as one cannot
generalize on a subject such as this. I thought
that you might know of sources, books or even have
material that could assist me in my research.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for
continuing my investigations I would really
appreciate it.

The Gestapo security
service (Sicherheitsdienst) carried out morale
surveys -- eavesdropping by plain-clothes agents
on bar room conversations, etc. -- to find out
what people were thinking. These Meldungen
aus dem Reich (there are similar series for
Norway, France, Holland, etc.) are largely
intact in the files of the SS (see the Guides
to US National Archives, Microcopy T175).
The originals are back in the Bundesarchiv in
Koblenz now. K Boberach published an abridged
edition of Meldungen aus dem Reich, and
you can take it that he would not have omitted
any Holocaust-related references found in these
reports.

In the files of the
propaganda ministry are a few isolated documents
referring to unrest caused by the deportations
from Poland (i.e. the Generalgouvernement) of
Jews and their subsequent fate, which was
popularly rumored; I refer to these in my
biography "Goebbels.
Mastermind of the Third
Reich".

German soldiers' and
civilians' mail often fell into the hands of
Allied Intelligence, as the armies advanced, or
ships carrying such mail were captured. Search
for the reports on the contents of this mail.
You will find some in the papers of Colonel
Philps in the Hoover Library, Special
Manuscripts Division, at Stanflord University
California. No explicit references here to the
Holocaust, at least in those summaries that I
read.

Read the real private
diaries of Germans at the time. But make sure
they are genuine, contemporary diaries, not
rehashed for post-war publication. Not much
reference to the Holocaust here either. (And
don't believe the conformist waffle about people
being frightened to write diaries in a
dictatorship).

The
closer people got to the front, the more they
knew: See for this knowledge the overheard
conversations of German (and Italian) prisoners
of war, both high- and low ranking, in the
Public Records Office in London: these CSDIC
reports are mostly in PRO series WO.208. There
are hundreds of thousands of these transcripts.
I have posted some of them -- which answer your
question -- on my website: they take weeks, if
not months, to exploit, and I will eventually
publish the
best as a book; the
knowledge of some German generals like
Bruns
and Kittel
is clear. See too my index
to interrogations
relating to my forthcoming Heinrich
Himmler biography, where you will find many
conversations of prisoners aware of the
atrocities on the eastern front, at
Babi
Yar and
elsewhere.

You might also try a
newspaper search of newspaper indices: The
New York Times, The Times (London) and other
newspaper of record have useful indices: this
will tell you what the rest of the world knew
about what was going on (often grossly inflated
for propaganda reasons). Look at the period
around September/October 1942, particularly.

The BBC Monitoring
Service [find them now at http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk]
published voluminous daily reports on broadcasts
from Axis and Allied transmitter; but these
would take immense wading through, and I don't
think there is any index.

Finally, the British
carried out their own regular morale surveys,
and circulated top secret letter-censorship
reports which reflected not only what members of
the British public were writing to one another,
but also foreign letters that passed through
British hands: there are several quarterly
surveys on "The Jewish Problem" based on this
source, and although they are widely scattered
they are of extraordinary source value, as they
are based on the bedrock of original letters
written by ordinary people. The letters written by Jews in
England and elsewhere to Jews in Palestine are
particularly revealing on the subject of such
knowledge, and there are even one or two such
letters from people in Germany, which have
somehow made it to the outside world. I refer to
these reports in my book "Churchill's
War", vol. ii:
"Triumph
in Adversity". Check
the source notes, I am afraid I don't have time
to do all your homework for you.

Having said that, you may
find one or two published sources addressing the
same questions, What did people know, and When did
they know it? I believe that Martin Gilbert,
an otherwise undistinguished historian, has
published a book on this very topic (he is an
obsessive Holocaust historian, but a conformist. So
expect no original thinking from Gilbert).

As for the
non-conformists, try codoh.org
for general information. Another good starting
point would be the news bulletins of the Polish
Press Agency in NewYork, or the Jewish Telegraph
Agency during the war -- that would also show what
people really knew. Have a look at myAuschwitz
index (and don't forget
the previous
Auschwitz index)and get back to me if you
need more pointers.